Sunday, March 1, 2009

Whole Wheat Pesto Pizza

So Scott and I are trying to cut out everything white in our diet. I've been cooking with alot of whole wheat lately. We are HUGE pizza fanatics, but my waist is getting the best of me with all that white flour and well, most pizza is extremely fattening. I decided to compromise so I could get my fix. I was going to make homemade pizza dough but we were in a huge hurry so I bought some ready made whole wheat pizza dough from Fresh and Easy. I had some store bought pesto in my fridge as well so we decided on this recipe. It was AMAZING! I honestly have to say this was one of my absolute favorite pizzas I have eaten EVER...and it was in my own kitchen. You have to try this. I guarantee you will love it as much as we did. And no lie...I made this start to finish in less than 20 minutes and that included bake time. So it's easy and it's semi-homemade and it's healthy. It doesn't get better than this.

Whole Wheat Pesto Pizza

Whole Wheat Pizza Dough (Fresh and Easy, Trader Joe's)

Package of store bought Pesto or homemade

Mozzarella cheese

Tomatoes

Fresh Basil

Olive Oil

Corn Meal (to dust on the pizza stone)

I started out by heating my pizza stone in the oven at 450 degrees. I have a stone from Pampered Chef and for pizzas, this thing is great. I heated the stone up for about 7 - 8 minutes, basically however long it took to preheat the oven is how long I kept it in there.

While my pizza stone was getting hot, I rolled out the dough keeping it in a circle shape and trying to get it close enough to the size of my stone as possible.

Once the stone was heated up, I pulled it out of the oven and sprinkled corn meal all over the stone...just enough dusting so the pizza wouldn't stick. I then rubbed some olive oil all over my dough and placed into the oven for 5 minutes.

Once the dough was browned up a little, I pulled it out of the oven and spread my pesto all over the dough.

Little Tricks of the Trade

Potatoes:

To keep them from budding, place an apple in the bag with potatoes.

Celery:

Wrap celery in aluminum foil when putting in the refrigerator, and it will keep for weeks.

Apples:

Refrigerated apples last up to 10 times longer than those left at room temperature. To prevent apples from speeding up the ripening process of other items in your produce drawer, store them in a plastic or brown paper bag.